Part 26 (1/2)
As it nears dockside, Kudra sees that it is a barge, of considerable length, and canopied with pink linen, from whose edges fringe and ta.s.sels dangle. The barge is hung with paper lanterns, in which candles blaze gaily. Scattered about the deck are tables and chairs, resembling those of an inn, and here sit people eating spicy southern foods and sipping beer and pineapple coolers. Minstrels with droopy black mustaches wander the deck, strumming guitars. Women in shoes with heels like daggers dance, rattling tambourines all the while and cooing lubricious phrases to the many parrots that occupy crude wooden cages. From below deck, a katzenjammer of libidinous voices is heard. On the side of the barge, the name h.e.l.l has been painted.
Despite the fact that there's no odor to give magnitude to the foods on deck or to the s.e.x below, the pa.s.sengers seem merry. Kudra believes that she recognizes one of them. Unless she is mistaken, it is Fosco, the calligrapher from the Samye lamasery. He is at table, in repartee with a pair of elderly Chinamen, whom he addresses as Han Shan and Li Po. They hurl lines of spontaneous poetry at one another, each trying to top the last, often slapping the tabletop and laughing wildly. Kudra waves and waves, but it is impossible to get Fosco's attention. The dead have little interest in the living, she surmises.
The barge sc.r.a.pes against the dock with a careless rasp. The captain, a seedy Spaniard in a comic-opera version of a military uniform, leans over the rail and takes the troubadour's pink ticket. Once the fellow is aboard, the vessel floats lazily away, bound for unknown sprays.
As the barge departs, it turns, affording a view of its starboard side. On this side, the vessel wears a different name entirely. Heaven is what it says.
Kudra returns to the scales. The young woman is hard at work, testing hearts, a.s.saying the precious metals of the life well-lived. ”How did you land this job?” asks Kudra.
”I was not feather-light, but I was feather-bright,” she answers.
”I am not sure 1 understand. Yet I cannot help but notice that we strongly resemble one another, you and I.”
”Indeed we do.”
”Are we related? Am I an incarnation of you? Or something?”
”What makes you suppose that you would be an incarnation of me, rather than me of you?” She giggles and shakes her skunk-black curls. ”It is so amusing the way that mortals misunderstand the shape, or shapes, of time.”
”I am not sure I understand.”
”And I cannot help you understand. In the realm of the ultimate, each person must figure out things for themselves. Remember that, when you return to four Side. Teachers who offer you the ultimate answers do not possess the ultimate answers, for if they did, they would know that the ultimate answers cannot be given, they can only be received.”
Kudra nods. She looks around her. Once one is accustomed to it, the scene on the wharf is neither dreadful nor thrilling. It is, as a matter of fact, fairly boring, an ongoing performance of bureaucratic routine. Death is as orderly as life is disorderly.
The weigher looks up from the scales. ”Perhaps you ought to be going,” she suggests.
”fes. I should. But . . . how does one get out of here? Must I once more dematerialize?” As exciting as dematerialization was, Kudra was not looking forward to an immediate encore. Spiraling, ring by ring, through that zone of spin and crackle, was more exhausting than a month in a rope yard.
”That will not be necessary. There is a doorway on yonder side of the station.”
Kudra stares in that direction. She is less than a.s.sured. ”This place is so huge,” she says. ”There are so many doors.”
”Do not worry. Yow shall find it. There is a sign above the door.”
”What says the sign?”
”Erleichda.”
”Pardon?”
There is a ledge on the altar, caked with dirt and blackened by blood from the dripping of the strange fruit that is weighed there. With her finger, the woman writes the word upon the ledge.